Sunday, January 3, 2010

Questions for the Author

This post is for all the readers that want to ask Clare a question about Once Bitten. Usually I come up with a few questions for the author but this month I'd like to try something a little bit different. It's really easy: Just post a question in the comments for Clare to answer. Voila!

Here are my questions:

1. Once Bitten contained more than a few pages that dealt with the goth scene- House of Usher, Macabre Factor, the private ceremony etc. The Goth world is often used in vampire fiction and it is always interesting to read how authors choose to use it. I'd like to know how much, and what sort of research went into those portion of the book? How did you decide on the design aspects and names for House of Usher?

2. How do you decide on names for your characters? Do any of the characters represent people you know in real life?

7 comments:

The House of Usher looks like a club I used to go to in the Haight Ashbury district, in an old Victorian house. It was a gay club, so the Mens' and Womens' rooms were used indiscriminately, as I described in the book. It also had a big circular couch in the lobby. Alas, it no longer exists.

The vampire rituals started from a newspaper article in our local paper about wanna-be vampires who drink each others' blood in quasi-sexual rituals. I did a little more research and decided these clubs would be a great place for a real vampire to hide out. Thus the House of Usher was born!

The future of vampire romances? Right now many authors seem fascinated with the tortured vampire who wishes he were human. But I just watched a great series on DVD called Blood Ties, based on a book series by Tanya Huff. In Blood Ties the vampire hero is quite happy being a vampire. He's religious, wears a cross and has no problem being in churches. In other words he's not damned. I wonder if that's an angle more authors will pursue.

As for my next book, Cyd, I have a novella coming out in September, in an anthology called NOCTURNAL. The next book will be out at the end of 2010, I hope, but there's no firm date yet.

Character names are really important because they tell you a lot about a character without having to spell it out. Age, race, cultural background can all be inferred from a name. I have a book called "Names through the Ages" which lists both given and surnames for different cultures from the Middle Ages on. That's very useful when you're looking for vampire names! Eric changes his name "as the times change," he says, but his given name, Cyprien, is a common French name from the time he was born.

I would actually like to see the vampire branch out a little bit. Don't get me wrong, I love a good vampire romance but I think some sub-genre books would be great too. Maybe some more mystery crime solver vamps, along the lines of P.N. Elrod's Jack Fleming. Or even some books set in different time periods, like Saint Germain. As long as good vampire books keep being published, I'll keep on reading them!

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We review all paranormal themed books, including but not limited to: YA, Children's books, Mystery, Thrillers, Romance, Urban Fantasy, comics and graphic novels. All vampire genre reviews are primarily posted on the VampChix blog, and may be re-posted here at Bite Club. All other paranormal books will be reviewed here at Bite Club.
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